Godless Faculty
by kerricarri
Summary: If I knew beyond doubt that no one beside me in this world cared for me I could begin to convince myself that I was real, that I wasn't falling from my pedestal...a Yukimura destined for Hyoutei, not Rikkaidai, never quite realizes what's in his grasp.
1. to Remember

Do we really know what goes on inside Yukimura's head? It's why I'm completely taking advantage of a convenient lack of background and voice. Other than those intense moments of determination, what do we know of him anyway?

Hyoutei plays a fairly large influence. I mean that. This isn't the Child of God I'm writing here.

I look forward to the day I screw Rikkaidai's dynamics over.

* * *

The thing I've never understood was their fervor until I saw them that day at that concert. And I thought, "Ah. This is what it means to play."

"These are my parents," I tell myself. "These are the people they were meant to be without having me."

I say to them, "I can only respect you when you're up on that stage. When you play in front of a crowd, you deliver without fault, without hesitation. You are gods descending upon the people. You are magnificent when you play. You look at each other and know that it is right. This is your world and it is _only_ right."

And then, before them, I smile.

"It is your place, your birthright. It is not mine. There is no room for errant offspring in your world. You forget this. You forget this all the time, but you have forgotten something, Mother. Father."

Ironic, bitter twist of the lips, I smile. My eyes glow with a fervor that is not my own.

"You forget, it is the only time I do not exist."

--

"Enough," he says, striding forward with all the impotent calm he can muster. He is frustrated, I can see. I see very well no matter how hard he tries to hide it. He is not the only one to wield an intuitive blade.

"Yukimura," he drawls in his particular way. "Sakaki specifically said to wring the fledging first years through drills. Where are the sweat and blood, the pride of Hyoutei, I wonder?"

It is not poised as a question. No, of course not. It is Atobe in all his irate glory. He is fuming, not really. He only plays at concerned captain because I am a subordinate and he is a power high boy playing at a man. He is Atobe Keigo, and he won't let me forget it.

I level him with a look. Does it convey my utmost feelings, I wonder? I wonder if I am not eloquent enough for my peer? Do meaningful stares count?

What do I need to do, shout? "Sakaki-sensei told me no such thing."

Ah, I thought. There's the narrowed glare I've been waiting for, so contemptuous in nature. He affects cool apathy, appalling calm, but either way our interactions don't befit his standing. He finds our encounters degrading. I suppose I should care.

It seems Atobe is in a perpetual state of court fever whenever facing me. It's confusing considering I've never played him on court. I find this boy fascinating, really. How does he keep up this farce of a rivalry? We both know I cannot compete with him in matters of tennis. What more does he want?

Music has never been his forte. Perhaps he just wants to best me in all things Hyoutei?

Or maybe it's in his nature to be this cocky, this arrogant. Always provoking me, this one. What more do I have to offer?

He will not accept it, of course. He doesn't believe in my apathy. He doesn't think it's real.

As always, I am startled out of my thoughts. "While you're down here, Yukimura, go round up the first years. They're useless just standing there, which reflects badly on all of us—especially _ore-sama_. You're in Sakaki's favor. Act like it."

Atobe has a way with words. His ridiculous speech impediments actually do tone down while talking to me. With everyone else, he has them chirping his name.

Oh, those eager first years! Bloodthirsty and cutthroat, while being held under the thrall of their captain and leader. I can't coincide the images of sabotaging boys and puppy eyed fans.

The actual team is much less susceptible. I talk to them frequently.

I still don't understand why I'm ordered to keep up this pretense. I am not a tennis player. My talents and my will do not belong on that court. Why else have I been enrolled here, districts away from my home? Sakaki confuses me.

He sees something in me? What, the desire to flaunt more results into my parents' faces, forcing them to see more unsightly parts of me? I am not their perfect son, so why should I allow myself to sink further? Or even try harder. I am perpetually stuck.

I am tired. I'm hard pressed to conceal this.

At Hyoutei, it is not wise to let down your guard. This is compounded by the fact that I have no one to let down my guard with. I am always wary.

I miss my old district, but I hardly regret my decision. I have chosen Houtei Academy, and that's that. What use is there to bemoan lost opportunities or to puzzle over what could have been? Had I stayed for one of my home's grade schools until I could naturally progress into the junior high level? It's useless to speculate such things.

What could I have been had I enrolled in Rikkaidai?

I do not allow my mind to wander into these dangerous parts.

--

"You forget, it is the only time I do not exist," I say.

My mother lays a wavering hand upon my arm. "What is it that you want?"

"Yes," my father says, stepping forth. His face is curiously blank; the sight pleases me because of its opaque nature, and I know that I have hurt him. I am sure of it. "What is it that you want?"

"I want to get away from you," I say to the two of them. I say it, detached. There is no thrill in me when I twist in the words further. I watch them with the mechanical eye of a bird, a curious tilt to its head as it watches the insect it has pierced. "I want to get away from you long enough so that I can breathe."

The sight of my mother's cringing does not please me. My father does not say a word.

And for that, I am strangely left with nothing. There is nothing. My mind is not even cleared or remade into a blank slate—I feel nothing.

It is a strange apathy that descends upon my young shoulders then. A sort of grave, innate knowledge that nothing can be turned back and that I have made my choice. Nothing can ever be the same. There is no point in regretting.

This is my choice, to be driftless without a path, to live without a structured goal. This is what I've wanted...isn't it? For years I've been drifting, yearning for a certain goal that I have not achieved. I do not yet know what I am supposed to achieve, I only know that it must be spectacular.

But this yearning, this waiting. It gets old. I wonder what it is that I want. I am listless yet restless, always forever shifting in all directions for a purpose, for my focus.

And I am sick of it. I'm drowning, and I wonder if Sakaki does do right by me when he notes, quietly,

"You are wasted on our music program."

And I wonder if he is right.

To my father, a humble man, and to my mother, an alumnae of a similarly elite school, what does my choice say to them?

"Don't go," my mother begs on her knees. She clutches me with her hands, holds my legs in place, keeps me from taking another step. She is a disgrace. "Don't go, Seiichi. Don't go there."

My mother, whom I loved, knows full well the horrors of an elite school when she says those words.

I ignore them.

My father says nothing to me, has nothing to say. He is speechless, and not in a good way, but there are undertones of anger there. Disappointment. He draws back a hand to slap me, and then slowly, wretchedly, it lowers to his side.

His face turns away from me. It is the greatest insult he could have given me.

My father is a humble man. In that one instant, he chose not to strike at me. What does that say about my father's concerns when he, a respectful and humble man, does not strike out against his son? Is it mercy? Is it an impeccable shine to his character?

It is a fault of mine when I can read the undercurrents so easily. I recognize renouncement when I see it. Perhaps it is too extreme to say so, but I'm saying it like it is.

My father refuses to acknowledge me. Meanwhile, my mother begs. Begs and begs.

This is my family, my parents. The god figures I've looked up to, magnificent creatures I've dragged down from off their stages and corrupted with my willfulness. My spite.

Maybe it's only then that I truly began to drift.

* * *

Atobe might be mangled. I wish I could pull off witty dialogue, but it's not to be.

I read all of the Echizen vs. Yukimura match, and I thought, "What a lovely yet pragmatic, jaded bastard." Without tennis, Yukimura is nothing. His entire being had seized upon the sport like a lifeline. Not to say there isn't more to his character, but his focus is a little bit scary and I wonder where he'd be without his tennis. I've grown really fond of him now that I've actually experienced the source material. It makes me love Rikkaidai all the more, but then I start to think about where poor Sanada would be without the luminous and intense guidance of Yukimura?

Music. I have no excuse. If you want obsession, then my Ootori Choutarou fic is just absurd.

I'd like to know how I pulled off Yukimura, please.


	2. to Reason

More development on Yukimura's psyche, making this a dark chapter as it delves into the past.

At the beginning of the chapter, the current setting is established as the district games, but it won't be important until next chapter. This chapter's all introspective.

* * *

It occurs to me, just now, that the only friend I've ever had played tennis.

This is an inane thought.

Why am I thinking about this? What does this have anything to do with my current state of mind? Why is it I've realized this at the district _games_ of all places? I have long rejected anything of my old life, so why do I think of this now?

Is it cruel, Mother, to cast you out as thus? Or perhaps the scorn of my father hurts me more.

I was once their perfect son, the boy all Japanese housewives wanted to bear. The kind of son that one gossiping woman hisses to the next, "Ah, _there_ is a Todai candidate for sure! His marks are _perfect_, don't you know?"

_What I wouldn't be to be the Yukimura matriarch!_

Foolish. The lot of them.

So my grades were perfect, my demeanor polite, and my smile charming? I obeyed my parents, acted the dutiful son, and exceeded any mere housewife's expectations...for what?

And when the moment I wanted to _stop_, Kami, _stop_ finally came, they turn on me? My parents? Mother, do I offend your delicate sensibilities? Father, my disobedience to the unsaid rules?

My mother is not a housewife, as far as I know. I have not seen her for some time now. My father is anything but a mere salaryman, kissing up to his superiors and struggling, _backstabbing_, to meet end's meet. They are both musical genii, prodigies of their field. They go on tours together, make great PR with each other.

Where in all of their success, glitter, and marvelous stars does a son appear?

Even at the top, I still fell short; I was never their perfect son. But I was the perfect son to any other Japanese woman? One who dreamed of putting her son on the one track speeding pace to hell? Oh. No, not quite. Not something so _crass_ as that.

For what mother wants to drive her son to suicide?

In grade school rankings, I was at the top. At the beginning of each term, I reveled in being the best, of being _perfect_. Anything to have my parents look upon me with a smile!

And they did smile. Calculatingly. I did not see because I was naïve. I thought they were genuinely proud of me.

I knew I was the star student, the ideal to aspire to. I knew everything from unsophisticated ladies casting me coy looks to jealous glares boring in the back of my head. I knew everything from gifts of admiration and words of praise showered upon my person to love letters stuck clumsily between the shoes within my locker.

I even knew the despair of my classmates, the ones who knew they could not aspire to ever become what I had achieved. Their anger, their hatred. Their jealousy was harmless, and they were weak to simmer in their own failure and not try and _grow_.

I was the perfect son every Japanese housewife could ever have prayed and wept for. The one destined for Todai, the genius university among genius universities. I was of the elite, and I was proud.

Too proud. I've seen what happens when a self proclaimed genius has his pedestal ripped away from his feet.

He falls.

And so I, too, fell. I fell short to _him_.

Yanagi Renji. The damned rival who thrust into my world and shredded my carefully constructed bubble to shreds, throwing to the ground everything I'd ever fought for, every scrap and piece of pride I had gathered into one _perfect_ reputation.

He completely destroyed it. And I hated him for it, hated every blasé smirk and every subtlety in his ever shifting facial gears. Every expression he gave, every remark I took—I hated it all. This hate consumed me, bubbling in the pits of my stomach, my gut, until, gods, it _hurt_. Enveloped my being whole, overwhelmed my every thought, action, _need_ except for this passion to destroy him! To hurt him as he had hurt me! To have pounded into his mind exactly what he had done to render my very life null in the eyes of my _family_.

Damn him. Damn him to hell!

My mother was not a housewife then. She never was. Maybe if she had been she would have been kinder to me, known with tact what words she should've used on me that day. Maybe then there wouldn't be this unabiding black _pit_ that wrenched the distance between us even further.

For several consecutive weeks, my grades did not improve, and I did not see my rival driven into the ground. It was...disgusting. _I_ was disgusting.

Evidently, my mother thought so that day as well.

My perfect and lovely mother, detachedly interested in my day to day schedule, shook my shoulders and _slammed_ me into the wall and whispered, "_Why aren't you in first place anymore, Seiichi_?"

Or was that how my mother acted that day? I cannot remember who she was, how she acted. I can't coincide the two images of her I have in my head, one of a weak woman and one of a strong. When I left for Hyoutei, did she truly she ask me, begging and pathetic, for me not to leave home, not to go away? Or was my mother truly the one I have in this...this awful memory of mine, of her _hissing_ in my ear of her disappointment?

Who were my parents, really?

All I know for certain is myself. The only real thing I can confirm for sure is my own body, my own mind, and my own reason. I think, therefore I exist. I remember reading that quote from the annals of history, but I cannot remember where...

Only that I know I clutch at it, holding it to my breast dearly. Almost frighteningly. Am I frightened of being knocked from my foundation, from the sturdy pedestal I have only known?

Yes. You could say the tennis genius Yanagi Renji knocked me from the path of security the day I realized I'd been beaten—_he'd_ beaten me. In tennis, a sport which I had not yet learned, he triumphed over me, no doubt. But in academics? Who was I without my grades, my security, my justification for being one among genii?

No one. My parents forced music onto me, not the other way around. Prodigies must have a god gifted son as well, right?

And I had not a genuine interest in my instrument then. I had been...mediocre. I had not cared as my entire being hungrily sought a pretense of fame in academics. Therfore, my days slowly degenerated into this half yearning, half frustrated perpetual cycle of _disappointment_, disappointment that I could not catch up to this boy, that this boy was able to so easily beat me...

...that I was _weak_. That I was not good enough. That my mother no longer looked at me with that prideful gleam in her eye and that my father became unbearably cold—_who was I_?

I've seen brilliant students, perhaps even close to being _genii_ like me, have their pedestals ripped away from their feet. I've seen the weak insecurity in their eyes.

I've seen the downfall of so many bright minds, but most importantly I've seen the disgusting method some choose to destroy themselves with...and their families.

I've heard of these methods, quietly announced over the intercom by a mournful principal. I've even seen a couple for myself.

I've seen death. I've seen suicides.

Beings so weak with their own shortcomings deserved no less, yes, an ignominious end! But when Yanagi continually beat me—even into the next terms—my father called me into his office one day and I knew, since then, I've _changed_.

And I wanted to die.

I think, therefore I exist. I _reason_, therefore I exist. If I can't reason, if I lose—_or have been stolen of—_the capacity of thought, intelligence, then I do not exist. I don't want to exist.

I had been so assured of my own perfection, my own godly state. I was the child of _God_, the son produced from two prodigies of their field. _I could not fail_.

And yet I did.

I wanted to die.

I've seen death. I've seen suicides.

There was that boy in the classroom next over whose body was found splattered on school grounds, evidently _heaved_ over faulty guarding rails that allowed him to throw himself off a four story building. He'd jumped. He'd consistently ranked third under me.

And then there was that girl who'd always physically cringe away from me, from others. Whenever class rankings would be tacked high on standing boards, she would start to_ cry_. Pitiful. Absolutely demeaning. She was continually ranked among the last. Her corpse was found immediately after her hanging, right after her eyes started to tear up and bulge from their sockets, her hands left to frantically claw at uncaring air.

Was she struggling against her self imposed death, those last seconds? Did she realize the depths of her mistake when she faltered at putting the noose around her neck?

She was always ranked low, but her death was felt keenly; she'd been artistic, apparently. And very kind. Enough so to make one sickened teacher resign, at least. I had not been aware of the significance of her death until I realized what her talent was.

She'd not just been _good_ at the arts. She'd been a _genius_ of the fine arts. Like my mother. Like my father.

And then I saw her art, left openly displayed at her memorial service. Her artwork—beautiful, tragic.

_But beautiful_. Fleeting, transitory—so much like a human life! But a passion combined with a technical, genius artistry that was...tragic in its fleeting, its escape into death. Never to return.

I'd previously thought that human beings so _weak_ with their own shortcomings deserved no less, yes, an ignominious end. Yanagi had even sent me into a depression that I had no inkling to get out of, not when I realized that I could _not_, that I didn't have the capacity to.

I could not reason, therefore I could not exist.

But when I thought of her, that mindlessly stupid girl, something stayed my hand. I wanted to die, and yet I didn't want to die. Something was holding me back. I contemplated my own death, morbid as it was! And still, yet, something stayed my hand.

The first suicide I've experienced—that boy's—hadn't affected me. He was on the path of greatness and he hadn't been able to handle the pressures, the stress? I did not attend his funeral, his death did not make me cry.

But that girl's...the girl I'd always passed over in my mind's eye as inconsequential, stupid, unbecoming of studying in the same vicinity as me...

It was her death that impacted me the most, and squeezed my fledgling thoughts still. Kept me from dying, from becoming someone like _her_. Someone...tragic. Tragically fallen.

I was a genius, there was no doubt about it. I had my pedestal ripped from me, yes. I was shameful in my parents' eyes, all right. _But enough to die_? How...how dare they, they who presume to know so much about me? Failure? Finished? I was their son—how dare..._how dare they _underestimate me, how dare they think their expectations so high!

So it was not Yanagi himself who I hated. Perhaps if my mother had not been so detached from my childhood, maybe if my father had pretended to care even a little bit more...

Perhaps if they had _cared_. For real. But their affection did not exist. Therefore, it was not real.

And when I realized that, I realized that there was no one to care but myself. _I reason, therefore I exist_. The only real thing for sure in this life is my body, my mind, my reason. If I started to _care_ about myself, about no one else, then I would not be hurt. My expectations would be, rather than heartlessly and cruelly limited by the world, forever being soaring high above my thoughts, something to aspire to. A...healthy goal. To be perfect, to be perfection itself. I would disappoint no one else for myself, which would never happen because I could _never_ turn my own expectations against myself. And so I was safe.

If I cared, if I _knew_ no one cared about me than myself, I knew I would not be hurt. There'd be a glass shield placed before me, protecting me. The world could not touch me, only look upon my perfection. In turn, I could look at the world and not be afraid _because I was not afraid_.

If I knew, beyond reasonable doubt, that no one beside me in this entire world cared about my being, I could begin to convince myself that it is only right. My parents did not matter, my grades did not matter. I was not that fledgling genius, falling from his broken pedestal. I was not about to die.

Because if I died, who would care? But if I cared, then I would _exist_. And if I existed by reason, by showing myself that I was right and they were wrong, therefore I had the right to live. I did not need to die...because if I died, who would care? But if I cared, then I would _exist_...

But childish defiance was not a steady, sure thing. It was nothing comparable to the firm foundation I had been on before, the foundation on which I lived as my mother's child, my father's heir. My hate was overpowered by my hurt. I could not detach myself from my feelings or from the situation, and so I continued in my despair. I could not become again that _child of God_, the darling of my parents' eyes, but neither could I continue to exist in this half defiant, half desperate cycle where I tried convincing myself of my own worth, that I had not been thrown away...

That I still had _meaning_ in this world, that the world would still _care_ if I wasn't there. That my existence meant for something, that it had meaning. That I'd affected people enough for them to care.

And I realized that I did not hate my parents as much as I should've. I could not have kept up that...hate for long. I was tired. Angry, but tired. I wanted their acknowledgment, but I was beginning to grow numb to the very idea. It just wasn't possible...

The only real thing in this insubstantial world I was sure of was myself. I was the only thing I was absolutely convinced was real.

But in this world, in that life of consuming hatred and egotism and _hurt_, I had not yet known Yanagi Renji. I had not yet learned he was not just a mere boy but a very _force of nature_ that would tear my life apart, letting it stitch back together anew...together, scarred, incomplete, but _new_. Something different from the child of God. Something wholesome and good. Someone _changed_.

As long as my life's old pattern would not continue, I thought, as long as things were _different_, as long as I had the assurance that I would never be the same...this was all that I'd wanted! And I got it, in Renji, in my dear and precious friend—my only friend, my most precious friend.

I wonder if he even knew what I'd be without him.

I'd most likely be dead.

--

The day I told Renji I would not be attending Rikkaidai, he wept. Or is that my own wistful misunderstanding? I'm sorry, let me try that again.

The day I told Renji I would not be attending Rikkaidai, he challenged me to a game of tennis.

There.

What, did you expect something more? Something different? Dramatic, you say? Renji and I shared a mutually mature and beneficial relationship, one built on eventual yet sturdy trust. And knowledge. And if there was one thing Renji reveled in, it was knowledge.

And he _knew_ me.

So he challenged me to a game he knew I would lose. In the final days of our friendship, he was beginning to teach me the nuances of tennis, the glories of the court battlefield, the dynamics between players, the technical rules of the game awaiting to be twisted to your advantage...

The hand on my shoulder is trembling. We both pretend I cannot see. He whispers to the ground, as his head is bowed—

"Go. Go...Seiichi. That is my term. Go. Leave and don't come back."

He _knows_ me, the bastard. He knows I would lose. He knows there was absolutely no way I could beat him in a battle he knew best!

He...Renji, _why—_?

Even so, I affect nonchalance; it is the only tool of sanity I have in this crumpling house of cards. "...Shouldn't you be asking me to stay, eh, Professor?" His nickname, the title he's been honored with. Not that it mattered anymore.

"Win or lose, you'll...still leave anyway, right?"

My fists tighten into claws, biting into my skin. "You're saying I have to _win_ to convince you that I don't want to leave? That you're my friend?" Control slipped, and incredulity bleeds. This is how I sounded. Incredulous. Mindless with disbelief.

Renji slowly extracts his hand from my person. I notice the moment I can no longer feel the shaking in his arm, I could not read his face. It terrifies me, this not knowing.

_Does he care? Why doesn't he care? What's he saying? Why is he doing this?!_

"Yes, that's right," the Professor says in his too calm tone. "You have to win to show me that you care."

That _I_ care?

My voice abruptly goes cold. "Very well, Renji. I'll have to be sent away by your term, by the loser's prospects of this game, is that what you're saying?"

"_Hm, reading again, Seiichi?...the philosophes. Very western of you, as usual."_

_Light, calm, teasing. Renji is being amused._

Renji is not amused as he shakes his head. The narrowed glare he sets upon me is nothing short of terrifying—_where has my friend gone_?—and altogether foreign. Who is my friend? Who is this boy? _Who is Yanagi Renji?_

"No," he murmurs. "You'll have sent yourself away quite nicely."

I fall stricken in silence.

He opens his eyes fully.

"I am only helping the process along."

--

"_Hm, reading again, Seiichi?...the philosophes. Very western of you, as usual."_

Light, calm, teasing. Renji is being amused.

"_Western? Yes. Isn't the Enlightenment fascinating, though? How from the Scientific Revolution, men believed that they were on the precipice of God and perfection? But along comes the Enlightenment..."_

"_...when true secularization occurs, and reason is not just to showcase God but to fine tune society to its betterment., which the philosophes believed was absolutely possible in their hands."_

_Delighted, my voice is delighted. "So you have heard of them."_

"_Seiichi," Renji says, shaking his head slowly and smiling. "Just last week you were talking of Renaissance this and that. Are you amused by philosophy now?"_

_I shrug, and my reply is noncomittal. "I have always been interested in western thought. The Renaissance believed in the glorification of self, the revelation that man can be balanced and perfect by his individuality."_

_I am being perfectly blasé. Too calm, too casual—and he knows it. "Ah. So you haven't tired of its ideals."_

_He pauses. "And yet you've moved on. Why have you moved on? You never leave a subject unless you are completely bored with it."_

_My smile, I'm sure, is soft, telling. Pleading. "My parents are in Vienna, as you know."_

_He does know, considering that Renji's sympathetic mother thinks me doe-eyed and too sweet and too lonely a child to live home alone while his father is vaguely disapproving of a child being left to look after himself without a proper guardian in the city, much less in the country. _

_Suffice to say, we see a lot of each other, Renji and I._

_And so he does not smile back. In fact, his eyes are rather cold but not towards me. Never towards me. "Yes, I know. They're part of that...tour."_

"_The Mozart revitalization tour, yes."_

"_When Mozart is already revered in the city of Vienna." There is barely a sneer there, but I can tell._

_My smile becomes something resigned. "Yes," I say simply._

_And I wonder, in that instant, who he hates more: my parents, for subjecting me to this, or myself, for accepting it?_

And then I get my answer.

"Game set. 6-0." Renji closes his eyes and tips his head back, as if in pain. He whispers his next words. "Match won...by Yanagi."

* * *

Odd, isn't it? The way Yanagi pushed Yukimura away? Or did he? The pieces are all there. Why was Yanagi's winning terms that Yukimura leave for good without looking back?

If you're confused about the completely different portrayals you get of his parents from chapter 1 to chapter 2, Yukimura's supposed to be uncertain of them, very wavering.

Oh, yes, Yanagi will show up again. As far as I know, Inui is still friends with Yanagi during that time period, but this makes the Yanagi/Inui grade school misunderstanding a bit ironic, wouldn't you say?


End file.
